


Plans to Leave

by Gyptian



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Deserves Nice Things, Bad Relationship, Canon Divergence, Current Gaslighting, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s02e10 American Woman, F/M, M/M, Michael Guerin Deserves Nice Things, Past Abuse, Spoilers!, Suicidal Thoughts, but not yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24486115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Michael's bunker is his safe space, but not tonight. Alex, his head full of Jesse, comes a-calling. It's the same, until it isn't.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin (background), Michael Guerin & Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/ Alex Manes (past)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	Plans to Leave

**Author's Note:**

> This got dark. Hurt in this fic, hopefully all comfort in the next, but I couldn't make the tone match.
> 
> Also, please remember Michael is a hurt puppy with a very skewed perspective. I wanted to explore it, but I don't fully agree. See notes at the end.

Michael, raw from the day, nearly didn't open the bunker. He was tired. He was angry. All his empathy had been given to Isobel, his protectiveness to Maria, even as the day had grated open the scabbed wound that was his grief until it bled. He wanted to get the bracelet done, give it to Maria and go to sleep with her in his arms.

No, instead his past love – his cosmic love – came to call and asked for his help in making a deal with the devil. Fucking give pieces of alien tech to the toxic alien hunter piece of shit for some pipe dream? Leading him to some clue? How desperate was Alex? Angels would sooner come down and build his space ship for him. “Your dad _hunts aliens,_ Alex. He'll lead my family right off a cliff.”

“I've protected you so far, that's not changing,” Alex tried to coax him. So damn confident, like he was saying the sun came up in the east.

Well tough shit, people failed all the time. Exhibit A: Michael's whole damn life. It was the earth that spun them dizzyingly through the endless, devouring black, not a burning ball of divine light that traversed the sky each day on a chariot drawn by horses, or some such nonsense.

“Besides,” oh, leaning in, and talking in that soft voice that made Michael lock his knees so he wouldn't touch, cradle, _hold_ what wasn't his anymore. “He's – he's different these days.”

There it was. Michael scoffed and retreated to a safer distance. Fuck, it was summer after high school all over again.

The spirit of Jesse Manes had breached the bunker, possessing Alex's words, Alex's tongue, Alex's voice.

“You have to be kidding me.” Look who had walked right back into his daddy's grasp the moment Michael stopped trying to pull him out of it! A disbelieving chuckle rasped out of him as he walked in a circle. Restless energy flowed back into his limbs telling him to punch, kick, run.

“I don't trust him, Guerin,” Alex asserted. Oh look, denial, how cute. Hadn't they just seen some of the evil Manes men left behind today? Isobel's mom, paralysed by the proud lineage that spawned a world of suffering and persecution for Michael's family?

And still... “I'm asking you to trust me.” Michael never could say no this boy he had loved since he had first heard him sing. It was, maybe, a good thing Alex had left that summer, because Michael would have never let him go, no matter how much he twisted him up. Fuck his life.

Michael breathed deep and tried one more time to talk some sense into him. “When we were kids, you believed people were good. Despite people doing everything to prove you otherwise.”Alex narrowed his eyes. “And God I loved you for it.” Past tense, Michael, keep it past tense, even when it made his boy – looking so young today, so much like that summer in his punk jacket – drop his head.

“But what was charming when we were seventeen, it's just, it's just stupid now. How do you not see that?” Give it up, Alex, he wanted to add. Kill that ghost of your father in your head stone dead and salt and burn the corpse until it can't come creeping back. He's not worth it. “You believe there's some good in _your father?_ ” The fucker who repaid hate for love, betrayal for loyalty, lies for honesty, every damn time.

Alex – Alex went on the defensive.

God, every time. _Every time._

“Yeah I do!” he yelled while Michael hummed sarcastically so he wouldn't punch the idiot so he would _shut up_. “God forbid I have faith in people who don't give me a good reason to.”

Oh. Fuck. “That's not fair,” said the feral child from the bottom of Michael's soul, the one who still believed in justice. The one who kicked people until they wouldn't go away and then never let go. Except he hadn't kicked Alex, hadn't he? That had come later, the fighting, after Jesse Manes dragged them out of Eden minutes after they had found it.

“No?”

The dark energy that had been screaming through his muscles rose to a crescendo. “No!”

Alex pointed “Why is your hand covered?” he asked, suddenly all cocksure soldier. Michael felt all sensation in his limbs draw inward, suddenly too heavy, collapsing on itself and taking the light, the air in the room with it. “You miss your injury...” said Alex voice, growing more remote, ... _want_ to hurt. Your anger made you feel _safe._ ” Well fuck, wasn't the first time someone called him a masochist, but Alex knew better.

Didn't he?

Why did the steel trap around his heart fall like the walls of Jericho for this one human when it _hurt. So. Bad._

“...my father...” Michael could barely hear Alex through the rushing in his ears. Couldn't stand to look at him as he defended his dad to Michael. Shoved Michael into the same box as that fucker. _When I look at him, it hurts._ Seems like that went both ways.

“I-I don't want to live in that toolshed for the rest of my life,” pleaded the little-boy part of Alex. Well he was shit out of luck if he thought Michael could save him.

It was the summer after high school all over again. They should have been free, past the age of majority, free to vote and drink and fuck and love whoever they damn well liked. The world should have been theirs.

Michael had chained himself to Roswell for Isobel's sake.

Alex had never left behind the war that was his father.

Their histories had followed them into the truck bed, slept between them like the damn devil, twisting the words they whispered to each other until their ears caught only poison. Until – until Alex didn't even see _Michael_ anymore when he looked at him. Saw only a shade of Jesse Manes.

Michael could only stand there and take it while Alex slung his pain at Michael with sharp, bladed words.“I don't want to walk around thinking that people don't change, that one day everyone's just gonna let me down, 'cause I am not building a damn rocket ship in a hidden lair.”

He had meant it as an offering to Alex, showing him this place of sanctuary, where Michael was his truest self. Why, why could Alex not see it was his heart, held out in open hands. Why did he take it, only to toss it back at Michael's feet with a splat?

“There's one way for me off of this planet... and I need to believe in a reason to stay,” Alex begged him now and he couldn't look up to save his life, into the void that sucked all the love and breath out of him, between the stars expanding ever outward, leaving him lost between them.   
  


He couldn't see the tears he heard in that voice and survive it with a hale heart.

He looked up.

“I promise I'll keep you safe.”  
  


Michael almost let Alex walk out with the piece of not-console, but... “Can't let you leave with that.” For Isobel, for Max, he _would_ fight even Alex. 

His eyes were burning. His body the void of space.

Alex turned around and spat, “What are you going to do, fight me for it?” as he had at seventeen, at the end of their very worst fights, before he walked out.

Michael only crossed that line once. His nose had taken three days to heal.

“Goodnight Michael.” 

Michael turned to wipe his tears away as boots clanked up the ladder. Grunting indicated Alex succeeded in pulling himself up and out.

Alex could go to fucking Jesse Manes for all he cared. Let him learn the hard way his father could never be loved, would not be softened by a stay in the hospital as if lived in  _As The World Turns._

Let Alex learn on his own to let humanity take a hike and live for himself.

The hatch clanked close with the same finality as the echo of Alex's words, “...I need to believe in a reason to stay.”

He'd heard words like that before. But Alex wasn't Melissa. Wasn't a fourteen year old crying her eyes out on the toilet with a bread knife in her hands. 

God, no, any plans  _he_ made were far more likely to succeed.

Panicking, Michael rushed up the ladder. He slid down the first few rungs, his limbs tingling, lack of sensation throwing his nervous system out of whack. Shit. It was a clumsy, noisy climb.

He threw the hatch open with enough telekinetic force it rebounded and nearly smacked him in the head. He pushed it open again with palms that couldn't really feel the cool of the metal. 

He was out, good enough. 

“Alex!” he yelled, before realising he was staring at two boots, one knee under his belly. He pushed himself up. 

A thousand-yard stare looked right through him as if he wasn't there. Then - 

His knee tackle brought Alex to the ground. The shadowy figure missed, rolled.

“Go, go, go!” He slammed the hatch closed with his mind and put the lock on. His hands hoisted Alex back up and his legs carried him to his truck of their own accord, while he dragged Alex by one elbow. 

“Wait, I...”

“They've come, Alex, _we need to go_.” Like they'd come for his mother. 

They threw themselves into the cabin and he floored the gas to get out, years of driving it guiding his movements where his damn shorted-out nerves didn't. 

*~*

In another world, Michael remembers later and leaves the bed carefully so he won't wake up Maria. 

He lets his phone ring and ring, but Alex never picks up.

**Author's Note:**

> I am 100% on board with Alex in that believing in humanity and seeing the good in others make for an excellent alternative to having little or no self-esteem when you're in a dark place and you need to give your life meaning. Do note it's a coping strategy, and a step on the way to healing, not a replacement. If it's one that also works for you, then this is the next logical step to contemplate in the fulness of its implications, with the support of a licenced therapist: you are a member of humanity.
> 
> I am also of the mind that Alex and Michael, given their pasts, may not have had the healthiest relationship as teenagers trying to be everything to each other. I adore the times when they are the mutual appreciation society they so badly need. This is not that story.
> 
> And the elephant in the background of the room... Team Maria vs. Team Alex... I can and will respond with a deep cut from the ace community on amatonormativity to any negative comments. The show is doing Interesting Things and we're in the middle of the story. Shhhh, enjoy the ride.


End file.
